Turncoats: How the Taliban Undermines and Infiltrates the Afghan Local Police

ALP commander Toorjan in April 2013. Photo: David Axe

ZARI DISTRICT, Afghanistan — The sound of gunfire was the first sign that the Afghan cop’s loyalty was suspect.

It was February in Hadji Musa, a village in the poppy-growing Zari district of northern Kandahar province, traditionally one of the most violent regions in a violent country. 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 3-41 Infantry — part of the high-tech 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division — had received a tip from Toorjan, commander of the village local police unit, claiming that someone in Hadji Musa wanted to talk. Someone with direct knowledge of Taliban activities.

Beyond that, Toorjan had provided almost no information. All he could offer was an implied promise: Trust me.

And that’s exactly what the U.S. platoon did, marching into Hadji Musa behind the lean, mustachioed Toorjan. As the coalition patrol arrived just outside the mud-walled ALP station on the outskirts of the village, Taliban gunfire erupted from the beyond some rows of dormant grape vines.

It was 3rd Platoon’s first gunfight in Zari and, for many of the roughly 20 young soldiers, their very first time under fire. “We were like, what’s this?” recalls Spec. Joshua Cripps, a mouthy young marksman. The Americans reacted instinctively, diving for cover between the 8-foot-tall earthen berms that double as vine trestles. Afghan army troops returned fire, giving the Americans time to organize a direct assault on the attackers’ positions.

One Taliban fighter was wounded and the others fled. No one on the U.S. side got hurt.

Gunsmoke cleared, pulses slowed and the patrol continued. And that’s when Toorjan announced that, in fact, there was no informant — he’d been mistaken all along. Only later, after much more exposure to unusual police behavior, would the 3rd Platoon troopers reflect … and suspect that maybe Toorjan had set them up that day in Hadji Musa.

Over the course of a tense six months in Zari, 3rd Platoon and the rest of Bravo Company would encounter case after case of sketchy behavior by the ALP, possibly indicating that the local police — either willingly or through coercion — had switched sides and were now actively aiding the Taliban.

It’s a disturbing possibility with huge implications for the coalition. U.S. officers in Zari say tips from the local cops are supposed to be their main source of battlefield information. If the American-led NATO coalition can’t trust the local police, it can’t trust much of what it thinks it knows about Afghanistan — and its plans for the war-ravaged country’s future could be in big trouble.

Bravo Company in Zari in April 2013. Photo: David Axe

Mixed Loyalty

Inspired by the Sons of Iraq militias that had helped change the tide of the fighting in that country, the ALP program was launched in 2009 and represents at least the fifth time that the NATO alliance has tried to stand up local pro-government militia forces. Attempts one through four ended in failure when local policemen began extorting civilians for protection money, selling their weapons and ammo to insurgents and answering to local warlords whose interests did not always align with those of the alliance.

Four times stung, NATO was determined to handle the local police differently. The alliance weeded out the obviously disloyal cops, assigned U.S. Special Forces to advise those remaining and, as an accountability measure, asked the Afghan national police to handle the ALP’s meager pay. Still, the local cops’ motives and loyalty remain unclear.

Political ambivalence is as Afghan as the blazing sun, jagged mountain peaks and endless pastel fields of blooming poppies, the source of much of the world’s opium. Especially in the weakly governed border regions where decades of warfare have taken the greatest toll, Afghans are careful about openly backing one side or another. Instead, they balance between powers, sipping tea and smiling with the Americans while quietly making deals with the Taliban, just in case.

It’s a survival mechanism born of long, painful experience. “They don’t always have the same confidence in the future,” explains Thomas Casey, 3-41 Infantry’s bookish executive officer. The locally recruited ALP — Zari, with a nominal population of 81,000, has 600 local cops — embodies this ambivalence.

In Zari recently, one ALP commander showed up to a meeting with American forces sporting Taliban tattoos on his knuckles, signs of his past affiliation with the group. An ALP station in the district was found to be selling ammunition to the insurgents. Another was manufacturing IED components and turning them in to American troops, hoping for rewards of fuel and supplies.

ALP radio chatter, intercepted by U.S. forces, indicated that many of the local cops were unsure who would emerge more powerful following the American withdrawal — the Taliban or the Afghan government — and so were courting both sides. “They’re hedging,” says Capt. Dennis Halleran, the stocky, boisterous Bravo Company commander.

Capt. Dennis Halleran of Bravo Company at a security shura on April 9, 2013. Photo: David Axe

Vengeance

To be fair, some ALP have fought fiercely against the insurgents. In March, a small Taliban force opened fire on a combined ALP and national police squad guarding poppy eradication workers. The cops, both national and local, fought back, killing two Talibs at the cost of two wounded on their side. The ALP proudly brought the insurgents’ dead bodies to a U.S. base to verify their claims of combat victory.

But in at least one case, the Taliban appears to have used the pro-NATO cops’ initiative against them in order to undermine and influence their less aggressive fellow officers. In late March, a Zari-based local police officer named Toorialay, second-in-command of the ALP unit in Zenadon village, traveled all the way to neighboring Panjwai district to hunt down a Talib who had killed his brother, himself an ALP.

The traditional pashtunwali code of southern Afghanistan demands an eye for eye. But people who know Toorialay say he was motivated by more than revenge. “He hates the Taliban,” more than one person tells Danger Room.

Using the investigative skills drummed into him by the U.S. Special Forces who had trained him, Toorialay found his brother’s murderer before the district authorities did — and killed the Talib in revenge. That time the law was swifter than vengeance, and local authorities arrested Toorialay. Today he languishes in an Afghan prison.

U.S. troops in Zari say the kidnapping of Toorialay’s brother was part of a larger strategy. Toorialay had a reputation, rare among the militia-style ALP, of aggressively patrolling his corner of Zari district. The Americans say Toorialay’s leadership had helped keep the insurgents out of Zenadon.

Apparently fearful of directly attacking Toorialay, the Taliban had instead sought to remove the police officer from Zari by killing his brother and thus luring him to Panjwai. Granted, the insurgents apparently did not expect the rogue local cop to succeed in his revenge quest — and so quickly. Even so, the Taliban gambit was successful. It might have come at an unexpectedly high cost, but the village of Zenadon was now wide open to insurgent infiltration.

An Afghan Local Policeman in Zari in April 2013. Photo: David Axe

Rat Lines

On one early spring patrol, Bravo Company’s 2nd Platoon discovered a small green cloth flag tied to a tree in Zenadon. Overhanging a gap in a badly damaged wall, the flag appeared to be a marker, perhaps meant to show where insurgents could sneak into the town.

The flag becomes a focus of a three-day follow-up mission in Zenadon beginning April 18. “Fighters are here, I have no doubt,” 1st Lt. Christopher Gackstatter, 2nd Platoon’s tall, baritone-voiced platoon leader, tells his soldiers as they gather on a gravel staging area inside Bravo Company’s walled outpost.

It bugs Gackstatter that the ALP seem not to be worried about the apparent Taliban rat lines running into their village. The Zenadon ALP unit, numbering around a dozen men and teenage boys, hasn’t been the same since Toorialay left the unit to avenge his murdered brother.

True, the local cops have turned in a number of IEDs they claim to have found in Zenadon. But Gackstatter isn’t convinced the cops aren’t also helping the insurgents. Passively, perhaps, by turning a blind eye to their rat lines. Or more actively. It’s possible the Zenadon ALP actually put the green flag there themselves. “We have a good working relationship with the ALP,” Gackstatter reminds his soldiers. “But don’t trust ‘em.”

2nd Platoon rolls into Zenadon in its Stryker vehicles and idles just outside the ALP station. Gackstatter and a security detail led by Sgt. Hun Park sit with the ALP in their surprisingly well-appointed compound. The cops have brand-new motorbikes, new walkie-talkies, a well-tended garden — a even a dove coop full of the cooing, bobbing birds. The American hand out sticks of fruit-flavored gum to the Afghans and accept hot, sweet green tea in return.

“We’ve pulled IEDs out of the ground that were new, so there are definitely Taliban here,” Gackstatter tells the cops. “Are they coming in at night?”

A middle-aged policeman named Radmadullah speaks for his fellow cops. “Everyone looks like a farmer, everyone acts like a farmer,” he says vaguely, implying there could be insurgents in the town while artfully dodging the lieutenant’s pointed question.

Gackstatter eyes Radmadullah. It occurs to the young lieutenant that he has never seen this particular cop before. And yet here the man sits, representing the entire ALP unit as though he were a longtime veteran of the force. Radmadullah really is a trained and certified local policeman — he has the identity card to prove it — but his background and relationship to Zenadon are unclear. And that makes Gackstatter nervous.

Teacups are drained. Gum is spit out. Half the Americans and several Afghans grab their weapons and head into the heart of Zenadon in a long snaking line. Park takes the lead while Sgt. 1st Class Dennis Barnes, the platoon sergeant, anchors the center of the patrol. Park, always with a wad of chewing tobacco bulging in his lower lip, navigates the mostly lifeless village until he finds that suspicious-looking green flag still suspended from its tree.

He’s about to ask one of the ALP about the banner when the Afghan leans in and tears down the flag, insisting it’s just garbage blown into the branches by the wind.

But it was tied there, Park thinks.

Standoff

Park makes eye contact with Barnes, whose two decades in the Army have made him cranky and paranoid. Almost wordlessly, Barnes and Park agree to cut short the patrol.

Back between the Strykers, the two non-commissioned officers huddle with Gackstatter. “I don’t trust the ALP,” the barrel-chested Barnes tells his lieutenant. Park chimes in, describing the cop’s weird behavior around the flag.

Together, Barnes, Park and Gackstatter start piecing together the clues: An unknown policeman shows up out of the blue and more or less takes charge of the whole ALP outfit; the cops have new, expensive bikes and intercoms that they should not be able to afford on their meager salaries; and on top of all this, the ALP are going out of their way to keep the Americans from closely inspecting possible evidence of Taliban presence in Zenadon.

The three men glance over at the ALP station and notice something else new and worrying: For the first time in multiple visits, the cops have posted an armed guard on the station wall, overlooking the U.S. bivouac. Over the next few minutes, two more armed guards join the first. Now a full quarter of the Zenadon local police force has its weapons turned toward its American allies. The Americans can’t help thinking of the 50 coalition troops killed by their Afghan partners in so-called “insider attacks” in 2012 and 2013.

Gackstatter takes a quick survey of his NCOs: should they stay or go? “Go,” Barnes says. “Go,” Park adds. “Go,” the others say. They’re unanimous. End the planned three-day mission after just a couple of hours.

Gackstatter directs some of his soldiers to point their own weapons in the general direction of the ALP station — without being too obvious about it. The other Americans rush to pack up the Strykers. Gackstatter calls across to the ALP, asking for one of them to come outside for a quick word. The lieutenant lies, telling the delegate that 2nd Platoon has been called away on an urgent mission.

The cop clearly knows better. He seems almost desperate to ease the Americans’ fears, as though trying to restore the careful equilibrium the Zenadon ALP has struck between the Americans and the Taliban in the weeks since the insurgent-hating Toorialay left the unit. “We are friends,” the delegate insists, without explaining who his other friends might be.

Gackstatter shakes the Afghan’s hand and assures him 2nd Platoon will be back soon. Just how soon, the Afghan has no idea. For the following day, 2nd Platoon secretly returns to Zenadon, parking their Strykers beyond sight of the ALP station and tuning radio intercept gear, eavesdropping on the intercom frequencies in an attempt to overhear the cops’ conversations, and begin determining with whom their most important allies have been speaking … and to whom they’ve been answering.